Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The search engine that was to become Google was originally nicknamed "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Eventuallythe name was changed to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word “googol”, the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information.

Originally, Google ran under Stanford University's website, with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu. The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friend's garage in California. In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed one billion for the first time, an 8.4 percent increase from May 2010 (931 million)

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You know these buttons on your computer:

Ever wondered why they use those symbols and why they don’t simply say On and Off?

Here's why:

The first two pics with the 1 and 0 to indicate power on and off are based on the binary system, with 1 standing for On and 0 for Off.

The symbol with the 1 inside the 0 is a toggle type switch that indicates that pressing the button will turn the device on and off.

This symbol with the 1 in the line of the 0 indicates that pressing it will go from on to standby, and vice versa.

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The Mexican Wave was seen at American football games from 1981 but did not achieve international recognition or its name until the 1986 World Cup in Mexico City. There is apparently no truth to the explanation that a person in the audience spilt hot enchiladas on his lap and on people sitting nearby.

Monday, April 28, 2014

You should go there and see it in person it’s mind boggling how they even got up the hills by building tunnels and see how young these soldiers were. Enjoy the day Yiasou

Arthur

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From Leo, a comment on the visit to Ayres Rock by Royals William and Kate:

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Some Monday items:

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Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace,

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go,

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child works hard for a living,

But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

- Oxford Book of Children’s Verse, first recorded 1838

(I checked my birth date and found it was a Monday, not the Sabbath).

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“I Don’t Like Mondays” is a 1979 song by Bob Geldorf, father of the late Peaches Geldorf, and his group the Boomtown Rats. It hit No 1 in the UK.

The name of the song comes from a news report on a 1979 school shooting by 16 year old student Brenda Ann Spencer at an elementary school in San Diego.

Firing at children in the playground using a rifle that had been given to her by her father, she killed two adults (the principal and a custodian, who were trying to protect the children) and injured 8 children and a police officer. The school was located across the street from her home. She expressed no remorse. On being asked why she had done it, she said “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” During the 6 hour siege, according to negotiators, she made other comments equally shocking:

“There was no reason for it, it was just a lot of fun.”

“It was just like shooting ducks in a pond.”

“[The children] looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings.”

Spencer was sentenced to 25 years to life in 1980.

BTW:

Spencer was denied parole in 1993, 2001, 2005 and 2009. She will next be eligible for parole in 2019. Murderers are rarely granted parole in California.

As to the origin of the band name, the Boomtown Rats changed their name at the time of their first gig. Having been booked under the name "The Nightlife Thugs," the group agreed on the name change when Garry Roberts threatened to resign if they were called that. It was changed to the "Boomtown Rats" after a gang of children that Geldof had read about in Woody Guthrie’s's autobiography, Bound for Glory.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Continuing the American Film Institute list of best film quotes, compiled in 2005, as selected by judges who comprised film artists, critics and historians. Selection criteria of the quotes included cultural impact and legacy, for example, to what extent the quote had become part of everyday language and the memories of the film as a result of the quote. Selections were from films shown in American cinemas, hence there is a weighting for American films. There have also been many superb films since 2005.

The list below provides the movie quotes on their own at first to enable you to see if you can identify the film and the actor speaking the line. This is followed by an identification and some trivia.

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95. “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.

94. “I feel the need – the need for speed.”

93. "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!"

92. "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac...It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!"

91. “Who’s on first?”

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95. “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.

Spoken by Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society (1989)

Trivia:

Director Peter Weir chose to shoot the film in chronological order to better capture the development of the relationships between the boys and their growing respect for Mr. Keating.

The poem by Henry David Thoreau that is featured on the front page of the poetry book Neil receives is not an original poem by Thoreau. Rather, it is a rearrangement of sentences from his work "Where I Lived", Chapter 2. The passage containing the quotes seen in the movie actually reads

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, ..."

The part of John Keating was once intended for Dustin Hoffman. The film was also going to be Hoffman's directorial debut before Hoffman withdrew from the film. Liam Neeson had originally landed the leading role to be directed by Jeff Kanew, but lost it to Robin Williams when director Peter Weir came on board. Bill Murray

Tom Cruise actually had to wear lifts in his scenes with Kelly McGillis. Cruise is 5'7" while McGillis is 5'10".

Riding on the back of this film's success, the US Navy set up recruiting booths in the major cinemas to try and catch some of the adrenaline charged guys leaving the screenings. They had the highest applications rate for years as a result.

Matthew Modine turned down the Tom Cruise role because he objected to the film's Cold War politics. Patricl Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Nicolas cage, John Cusack, Matthew Broderick, Sean Penn, Michael J Fox, Scott Baio and Tom Hanks all turned down the role of Maverick. Charlie Sheen, Jim Carrey, Rob Lowe, Eric Stoltz and Robert Downey Jnr were considered for the role of Maverick. Sheen would later go on to spoof the role in the 1991 comedy Hot Shots! (1991)

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93. "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!"

Spoken by Rosalind Russell as Mame Dennis in Aunti Mame (1958)

Trivia:

Reportedly, the character of Auntie Mame was based on Patyrick Dennis’s real-life aunt, Marian Tanner. A good-natured eccentric, who lived to be nearly one hundred years old, Ms. Tanner's advice to those seeking a more interesting, adventurous life was to never be afraid to try a new experience and to keep an open mind about everything and everybody.

The line, "Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death," does not appear in the book. It is derived from the stage play, where it was originally, "Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death." Though "damn" and "hell" are both heard in the film, "sons-of-bitches" was apparently thought too rough.

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92. "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac...It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!"

Spoken by Bill Murray as Carl Spackler in Caddyshack (1980)

Trivia:

Bill Murray improvised the "Cinderella story" sequence from two lines of stage direction. Director Harold Ramis simply asked Murray to imagine himself announcing his own fantasy sports moment. Murray simply asked for four rows of 'mums and did the scene.

Carl Spackler was originally a silent character in the script inspired by Harpo Marx. But after Bill Murray was cast, Harold encouraged Murray to speak and improvise.

Harold Ramis based the character of Carl Spackler on the first actor to be filmed in the role who was a shell-shocked war veteran. He couldn't remember his lines or act, so Murray replaced him.

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91. “Who’s on first?”

Spoken by Bud Abbott as Dexter in The Naughty Nineties (1945)

This sequence has been the subject of a previous Bytes post. Read it by clicking on:

The scene of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello doing their classic "Who's on First" routine is run continuously at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. It is regarded as the best version of this routine in existence.

The laughter that can be heard faintly in the background during the "Who's on First" routine belongs to the film crew and director Jean Yarborough. After numerous re-takes trying to eliminate it, Yarbrough just couldn't get the crew - or himself - to stop laughing during the routine, no matter how many times they heard it. So he just gave up and left the giggling in.

Although Abbott & Costello did not create "Who's On First," they copyrighted it as the "Abbott and Costello Baseball Routine" in 1944. "Who's On First" is generally believed to have been written by John Grant, who created many of Abbott and Costello's famous word-play dialogues, though a similar routine involving towns named "What" and "Which" appears in the 1931 Wheeler and Woolsey film "Cracked Nuts."

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Even those who have no knowledge of Hurricane Carter have probably heard Dylan’s 1975 song about him or seen Denzel Washington playing Carter in a 1999 film, The Hurricane. Casting Denzel as Carter will probably give an idea as to where the film’s sympathies lie.

Carter died last Sunday of cancer, aged 76.

Are the depictions by Dylan and Denzel correct? Not everyone thinks so.

Some bits of interest about Carter, the song and the film ;

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Some pics of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter”

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The following news report on his death provides a convenient potted history:

Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, a US boxer made famous by a racially tinged wrongful murder conviction that landed him behind bars for 19 years, has died, an association he directed said. He was 76.

Carter, who died of prostate cancer in Toronto on Sunday, was convicted twice of the 1966 murder of three people who were shot dead at a tavern in Paterson, New Jersey.

The conviction, which cut short his illustrious boxing career as a fearsome middleweight contender, made him a pop culture cause célèbre.

His story caught the attention of boxing great Muhammad Ali, and inspired Bob Dylan's 1975 song Hurricane.

Decades later the 1999 film The Hurricane earned Denzel Washington an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Carter.

Carter was convicted along with his friend John Artis, who was also black, by an all-white jury in the death of two white men and a white woman.

Carter was given a second trial in 1976 and convicted yet again.

In 1985, Carter was exonerated by a US district court judge, H Lee Sarokin, who said the conviction had been "based on an appeal to racism rather than reason," according to the non-profit Chicago Innocence Project, which investigates wrongful convictions.

After finally being released, Carter, a native of New Jersey, moved to Toronto.

Carter's advocacy for the wrongly convicted

From 1993 to 2005, he served as the executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted in Canada.

The organisation said it was "deeply saddened" by the death of Carter, "a truly courageous man who fought tirelessly to free others who had suffered the same fate".

Carter spent the latter part of his life advocating for the wrongly imprisoned.

In February, he penned an article in the New York Daily News on that very topic.

To live in a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens, that world would be heaven enough for us all

- Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter

"I am now quite literally on my deathbed and am making my final wish to those with the legal authority to act," he said.

"My single regret in life is that David McCallum of Brooklyn ... is still in prison," he said, before advocating for the man's release.

"If I find a heaven after this life, I'll be quite surprised. In my own years on this planet, though, I lived in hell for the first 49 years, and have been in heaven for the past 28 years.

"To live in a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens, that world would be heaven enough for us all."

Carter, whose formal education ended in the eighth grade, led a childhood dotted with unruly incidents before enlisting in the army, where he first took up boxing, according to The New York Times.

With an honourable discharge, he returned home and became caught up in petty crime before striking it big with his fierce and highly successful run in the boxing ring, The New York Times said.

There are various analysts, authors and critics who maintain that Hurricane Carter was more complicit in the triple murders in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1966 then depicted in the Denzel film and the Dylan song.

It is not my intention to provide in this post a detailed analysis of the evidence, only to note that there are competing views.

Comments:

When in 1985, Judge Haddon Lee Sarokin of the US District Court for the District of New Jersey granted Carter his freedom, he noted that the prosecution had been "predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure." He set aside the convictions and, after failed appeals by the prosecution, the prosecutors decided not to retry Carter a third time, deeming it impractical after 22 years. Carter’s release was not a finding of innocence.

Carter failed a lie detector test and, given a chance to re-take it after he'd been imprisoned for awhile, he refused. At his second trial, several witnesses who had given alibi evidence for Carrter admitted that they had been asked to lie for him.

Amongst those who feel that the song and the movie distort the truth, the opinion seems to be “”probably guilty but denied a fair trial.” According to one commenter: “Truth be told there is a pretty fair amount of evidence Carter was guilty. However, the prosecution and police screwed up the case in several ways; they withheld things from the defense that they were supposed to disclose, relied on the testimony of criminals, and messed up the chain of custody of evidence. Quite honestly, I think Carter was probably guilty. But that ain't enough to convict.”

Sent to a reformatory at age 14 for assault and armed robbery, he escaped, joined the army and was posted to West Germany where he began boxing whilst still in the army.

In 1961, having been court martialled and discharged from the army, he was imprisoned. After release he began boxing professionally. Shorter than the average middleweight, he made up for it by aggression, strength and punching style, earning him the nickname “Hurricane”.

Carter was never a Number 1 contender, as suggested by Dylan’s song. The highest he reached was No 3 and was ranked 9th at the time of the 1966 murders. Although he had had a world title fight in 1964, his career was in decline in 1966.

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The Dylan song:

Dylan meets Carter

The lyrics:

"Hurricane"

Pistols shots ring out in the barroom night

Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall

She sees the bartender in a pool of blood

Cries out "My God they killed them all"

Here comes the story of the Hurricane

The man the authorities came to blame

For something that he never done

Put him in a prison cell but one time he could-a been

The champion of the world.

Three bodies lying there does Patty see

And another man named Bello moving around mysteriously

"I didn't do it" he says and he throws up his hands

"I was only robbing the register I hope you understand

I saw them leaving" he says and he stops

"One of us had better call up the cops"

And so Patty calls the cops

And they arrive on the scene with their red lights flashing

In the hot New Jersey night.

Meanwhile far away in another part of town

Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are driving around

Number one contender for the middleweight crown

Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down

When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road

Just like the time before and the time before that

In Patterson that's just the way things go

If you're black you might as well not shown up on the street

'Less you wanna draw the heat.

Alfred Bello had a partner and he had a rap for the corps

Him and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just out prowling around

He said "I saw two men running out they looked like middleweights

They jumped into a white car with out-of-state plates"

And Miss Patty Valentine just nodded her head

Cop said "Wait a minute boys this one's not dead"

So they took him to the infirmary

And though this man could hardly see

They told him that he could identify the guilty men.

Four in the morning and they haul Rubin in

Take him to the hospital and they bring him upstairs

The wounded man looks up through his one dying eye

Says "Wha'd you bring him in here for ? He ain't the guy !"

Yes here comes the story of the Hurricane

The man the authorities came to blame

For something that he never done

Put in a prison cell but one time he could-a been

The champion of the world.

Four months later the ghettos are in flame

Rubin's in South America fighting for his name

While Arthur Dexter Bradley's still in the robbery game

And the cops are putting the screws to him looking for somebody to blame

"Remember that murder that happened in a bar ?"

"Remember you said you saw the getaway car?"

"You think you'd like to play ball with the law ?"

"Think it might-a been that fighter you saw running that night ?"

"Don't forget that you are white".

Arthur Dexter Bradley said "I'm really not sure"

Cops said "A boy like you could use a break

We got you for the motel job and we're talking to your friend Bello

Now you don't wanta have to go back to jail be a nice fellow

You'll be doing society a favor

That sonofabitch is brave and getting braver

We want to put his ass in stir

We want to pin this triple murder on him

He ain't no Gentleman Jim".

Rubin could take a man out with just one punch

But he never did like to talk about it all that much

It's my work he'd say and I do it for pay

And when it's over I'd just as soon go on my way

Up to some paradise

Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice

And ride a horse along a trail

But then they took him to the jailhouse

Where they try to turn a man into a mouse.

All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance

The trial was a pig-circus he never had a chance

The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums

To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum

And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger

No one doubted that he pulled the trigger

And though they could not produce the gun

The DA said he was the one who did the deed

And the all-white jury agreed.

Rubin Carter was falsely tried

The crime was murder 'one' guess who testified

Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied

And the newspapers they all went along for the ride

How can the life of such a man

Be in the palm of some fool's hand ?

To see him obviously framed

Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land

Where justice is a game.

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties

Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise

While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell

An innocent man in a living hell

That's the story of the Hurricane

But it won't be over till they clear his name

And give him back the time he's done

Put him in a prison cell but one time he could-a been

The champion of the world.

Just as irrespective of guilt or innocence, the appeal court recognised the racism and unfairness inherent in the Carter trials, so Dylan’s lyrics embody poetry separate from the accuracy or otherwise of the subject matter:

Dylan wrote the song after meeting Carter in prison. By that time Carter had been imprisoned for 10 years.

Dylan had trouble writing the song until he thought of it as a movie and wrote the lyrics as a narrative.

Dylan was forced to re-record the song, with altered lyrics, after concerns were raised by Columbia’s lawyers that references to Alfred Bello and Arthur Dexter Bradley as having "robbed the bodies" could result in a lawsuit. Neither Bello nor Bradley were ever accused of such acts.

The song was recorded in one take without edits. Hence you can hear a mistake at the 4.02 mark where the backing singer (Blakley) sings "Remember you saw you saw the getaway car" instead of "Remember you said you saw the getaway car/”

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The Film:

Oops, wrong poster

From IMDB:

Some of the plot and character points fictionalised or ignored include:

Carter was actually convicted of three muggings and served four years in prison prior to his murder trial

Carter and Lisa Peters eventually married and later divorced

In reality, there was no Det. Della Pesca

Carter did not give a speech in the courtroom when his conviction was overturned and Lesra was not in attendance

Carter was actually released from prison for 4 years between his two trial convictions

Carter was dishonorably discharged from the military after four court-martials (after just 21 months' service)

There actually was no evidence found that proved Carter's innocence. The reason his conviction was overturned was because the prosecution mishandled much of the evidence it had that Carter did commit the murders. When all the evidence from the real case is looked at, it seems more than likely that Carter was guilty of the murders, but got off on a technicality during his second trial.

The Real Della Pesca, Vincent DeSimone, never met Carter before the Lafayette Grill incident. He also died in 1979, so he never met the Canadian couple, nor he attended the trial 1985.